Friday, September 21, 2007

Ahmadinejad going to Columbia University [1]

Seems that Ahmadinejad is going to speak at Columbia University. I find it galling. I just listened to some Columbia faculty and students talking about how universities are places for "dialogue" and for people to talk "with one another."

True. But this is a man who has called for the destruction of Israel [wipe off the face of the map] and who has denied the Holocaust.

If he had denied American slavery or the Armenian Genocide would these same students be saying we should "dialogue" with him?

I think not.

The people at Columbia who invited him have minds that are so open their brains fell out.

11 comments:

If he denied the Genocide of Native American People they would certainly welcome him to talk at their university, they'd give him lots of money to deny what happened, maybe even a tenured position on their staff. You really think any history the government allows them to teach is any different? Why? History isn't about truth, it's about politics. And politics is about war. And war is about making money, but only for a very few people, while the rest of us pay the price in blood.

I meant no disrespect. I only know the two (state) universities that I attended personally, and the one (ivy league) my father attended for graduate studies when I was a child. Surely not a big enough sample for me to make such broad generalizations. I do sincerely apologize.

The American History I was taught in college has very little in common with what I learned from researching my own family's colorful past. It shook me to the core to first hear about what really happened to the indigenous inhabitants of this continent. It stupefied me, the immensity of the lies I had always taken as truth. For any people to suffer that sort of treatment by any other people is inexcusable. I don't care who they pray to, or where they live, we all deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.

Deborah, this is what they call "Free Speech". And in fact, in many cases, "Free Speech" is garbage coming from the mouths of irrelevant, uneducated people who deny scientific facts such as global warming, not to mention holocaust, and numerous well documented genocides, including Srebrenica genocide.

I have mixed feelings. I don't think Holocaust denial should be legitimized, but I'm guessing that's not going to be the subject of his speech.

Regardless, the opportunity to hear the president of a nation we seem to be on the brink of war with speak might help send a message to the world that the US still stands for the freedom of speech (I know you hate that argument, sorry) And I also believe it provides an opportunity to spark a dialogue (not necessarily with him, but with ourselves and the world) that is sorely missing.

It's the same reason I wish we had a President who had the mental capacity to answer the letter that he sent earlier ... I'd rather battle with the pen than with the sword.

"I hold that orthodoxy is the death of knowledge, since the growth of knowledge depends entirely on the existence of disagreement. Admittedly, disagreement may lead to strife, and even to violence. And this, I think, is very bad indeed, for I abhor violence. Yet disagreement may also lead to discussion, to argument and to mutual criticism. And these, I think, are of paramount importance, I suggest that the greatest step towards a better and more peaceful world was taken when the war of swords was first supported, and later sometimes even replaced, by a war of words." - Karl Popper

I think we should see having him speak as an opportunity to rebut sentiments that - like it or not - need rebutting in a portion of the world where anti-Semitism is rampant.

Oops, I meant to add ... I think him hypothetically denying the Armenian genocide would have no effect on them since I'm guessing the majority of students are unaware in the first place that there is such a thing as an Armendian genocide.

On second thought, if he was coming to give some kind of denial speech I would decline him. But if the topic were more general I'd let him speak. I'm still iffy on this ... I'd need to hear more pro and con arguments before I made up my mind.

Muslims Against Sharia condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the decision of Columbia University to provide a speaking venue for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Apparently letting Akbar Rafsanjani speak at the National Cathedral was not the height of American Dhimmitude, because providing a venue for the world's foremost anti-Semite, whose proclaimed goal is the destruction of the USA and Israel, definitely takes the cake. What is surprising is that we don't hear any complaints from Columbia alumni who should be ashamed of their silence.

As for the issue itself, I disagree. I don't think that dialogue here is in sense of "maybe we should listen to why he wants to distruct Israel, because he might have a point there".

I think it's more like "this guy is talking about destructing in Israel, and within a couple of years he might just have the power to do so. Maybe if we talk to him we'll figure out the best way to stop him".

If someone had the power, or was getting close to having the power, of restoring slavery, I think it would be irresponsible of CU not to invite him. Not in order to endorse slavery, but in order to understand him and stop him.

German academic, Dr. Matthias Kuentzel's, lecture, given to an audience ofwell over one hundred people tonight at Leeds University. According to theorganisers it met with a great deal of acclaim and evoked concern about theespousal by much of the British Left of Islamic fascist tendencies - thelegacy of Hitler and Nazism - surely a contradiction in terms?

University of Leeds, October 10, 2007Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic Antisemitism in the Middle East The impact of the Muslim Brotherhood by Matthias Küntzel

Today I will be laying special emphasis on the antisemitism of the ancestorof all forms of Islamism, the Muslim Brotherhood. Why? Because it seems tome that this organization has a particularly strong presence in Britain.Because – as far as I can tell - only in Britain has it succeeded in forgingan alliance with certain sections of the left – the Socialist Workers Partyand Ken Livingstone spring to mind here. This alliance might also partlyexplain why one hears proposals being voiced in Britain that leave us inGermany, mindful of what happened in 1933, simply stunned. I am referringhere to proposals for a boycott of Israel and I appreciate the Britishgovernment’s response to the “Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiryinto Antisemitism” which states that “such selective boycotts … areanti-Jewish in practice” and are “an assult on academic freedom andintellectual exchange.” Islamic antisemitism does not of course only affect Britain. In some circlesin Germany too antisemitism has increasingly become a part of Muslimidentity. We hear “Jew” being used as a term of abuse, we witness theadulation of rappers who call for attacks on Jews, and we hear the term“Nazi” used as a compliment.In Berlin a Muslim schoolboy called for “all the Jews to be gassed”. A gangof school students trapped one of their fellow pupils in a chemistry lab,telling him “now we will turn on the gas taps”, while during a visit to theMuseum of German History a group of Muslim students gathered round a replicaof an Auschwitz gas chamber and applauded. You see, they did not view theHolocaust as a warning, nor were they denying that it happened; it was beingtaken as an inspiration, as proof that it is possible, that millions of Jewscan be killed. But are things any better in Britain?“In Hampstead Garden Suburb, swastikas and the words ‘Kill all Jews’ and‘Allah’ were daubed on the house and car of Justin Stebbing” reports theTimes. “Dr Stebbing, who works at a hospital, said: ‘I felt violated. It’shorrible.’” Swastika, “kill all Jews” and “Allah” – the very topic of mytalk today. According to journalist Richard Littlejohn, “I met a Jack the Ripper tourguide in East London who was beaten up by a group of Muslim youths, who tookone look at his period costume – long black coat and black hat – and assumedhe was an Orthodox Jew and therefore deserving of a kicking. They didn’twant a ‘dirty Jew’ in ‘their’ neighbourhood”. Finally an opinion poll of 2006 – according to the Times - “revealed that ahorrifying 37 per cent of Muslims polled believed that the Jewish communityin Britain was a legitimate target; …and no fewer than 46 % thought theJewish community was in league with Freemasons to control the media andpolitics.’” This is not merely the ‘normal’ anti-Semitism of racial prejudice orreligious and social discrimination. This is also not the kind of hostilityto Jews found in the Koran. We are dealing here with a hardcore antisemitismwhich dehumanises and demonises Jews and which has a great deal in commonwith Nazi ideology. In Islamism this hatred of Jews is given a furtherradical edge by its association with the idea of religious war – with aglobal religious mission, a belief in Paradise and the rewards of martyrdom.This makes it at the same time suicidal and genocidal. Let’s take the example of Mohammed Sidique Khan, the ringleader of theLondon tube bombings, who lived in Leeds and had worked as a youth worker inBeeston. What drove him to blow himself up amidst innocent people? The testamentary video of Sidique Khan is very clear. It shows no sign ofdesperation but a soldier’s determination. Let me quote Sidique Khan: “Ourdriving motivation doesn’t come from tangible commodities that this worldhas to offer… We are at war, and I am an soldier.” The testamentary video of Shehzad Tenweer, another 7/7 perpetrator who livedin Leeds and studied at Leeds Metropolitan University, is very clear aswell. Let me quote him: “We are 100 % committed to the cause of Islam. Welove death the way you love life.” This culture of death which extinguishes the instinct that normally unitesall human beings – the survival instinct – is something beyond imagination.It is something George Orwell was not able to write about. The shockingmalice of such messages leads people who wish to keep a firm hold on normalpatterns of reason to suppress them or block them out. “We instinctivelylook away, as we do whenever we are confronted with monstrous deformity,”writes David Gelernter. “Nothing is harder or more frightening to look atthan a fellow human who is bent out of shape.” But while this may to someextent excuse the attitude of the ordinary citizen, it cannot justify theway the media, the academia and the politicians have been behaving. Our taskis to do the opposite. We must not look away, but instead look inside thefantasy world of the perpetrators and seek to grasp the immanent logicbehind their actions. If one wants to combat and repel the Islamistideology, one must first take it seriously as a specific outlook with itsown principles and history. And indeed, contemporary Islamism can only be explained in the context ofits 80-year old history.This is shown by the example of Shehzad Tenweer. With his “We love death theway you love life” he was placing himself in the direct tradition of Hassanal-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. Ten years later, in1938, Hassan al-Banna published his concept of jihad in an article entitled"The Industry of Death" which was to become famous. Here, the term “Industryof Death” denotes not something horrible but an ideal. Al-Banna wrote: "Onlyto a nation that perfects the industry of death and which knows how to dienobly, God gives proud life in this world and eternal grace in the life tocome." This slogan was enthusiastically taken up by the "Troops of God," asthe Muslim Brothers called themselves. As their battalions marched downCairo's boulevards in semi-fascist formation they would burst into song: "Weare not afraid of death, we desire it. . . . Let us die to redeem theMuslims!" The approach I intend to take today is a historical one. My talk centres onthree excursions into history. The first takes us in greater detail back tothe roots of Islamism in the Muslim Brotherhood. The roots of IslamismDespite common misconceptions, Islamism was born not during the 1960s butduring the 1930s. Its rise was inspired not by the failure of Nasserism butby the rise of Fascism and of Nazism.It was the Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 in Egypt,that established Islamism as a mass movement. The significance of theBrotherhood to Islamism is comparable to that of the Bolshevik party tocommunism: It was and remains to this day the ideological reference pointand organizational core for all later Islamist groups, including al-Qaedaand Hamas or the group around Sidique Khan. It is true that British colonial policy produced Islamism, insofar asIslamism viewed itself as a resistance movement against "culturalmodernity." Their “liberation struggle”, however, had more in common withthe “liberation struggle” of the Nazis than with any kind of progressivemovement. Thus, the Brotherhood advocated the replacement of Parliamentarianism by an“organic” state order based on the Caliphate. It demanded the abolition ofinterest and profit in favour of a forcibly imposed community of interestsbetween capital and labour. At the forefront of the Brotherhood's efforts lay the struggle against allthe sensual and "materialistic" temptations of the capitalist and communistworld. At the tender age of 13, the pubescent al-Banna had founded a"Society for the Prevention of the Forbidden" and this is in essence whatthe Brothers were and are - a community of male zealots, whose primaryconcern is to prevent all the sensual and sexual sins forbidden according totheir interpretation of the Koran. Their signature was most clearly apparentwhen they periodically reduced their local night clubs, brothels and cinemas- constantly identified with Jewish influence - to ashes.Gripped by this phobia, the Society of Muslim Brothers, from the day of itsfoundation, provided a haven for any man dedicated to the restoration ofmale supremacy. At the very time when the liberation of women from theinferiority decreed by Islam was gradually getting under way the MuslimBrotherhood set itself up as the rallying point for the restoration ofpatriarchal domination.It was on the one hand a conservative religious movement: For al-Banna, onlya return to orthodox Islam could pave the way for an end to the intolerableconditions and humiliations of Muslims and newly establish the righteousIslamic order. It was at the same time a revolutionary political movementand as such in many respects a trailblazer. The Brotherhood was the firstIslamic organization to put down roots in the cities and to organize a massmovement able in 1948 to muster one million people in Egypt alone. It was apopulist and activist, not an elitist movement and it was the first movementthat systematically set about building a kind of "Islamist international."The Islamists' answer to everything was the call for a new order based onsharia. But the Brotherhood's jihad was not directed primarily against theBritish. Rather, it focused almost exclusively on Zionism and the Jews.Membership in the Brotherhood shot up from 800 to 200,000 between 1936 and1938. In those two years the Brotherhood conducted only one major campaignin Egypt, a campaign directed against Zionism and the Jews. The starting shot for this campaign, which established the Brotherhood as anantisemitic mass movement, was fired by a rebellion in Palestine directedagainst Jewish immigration and initiated by the notorious Grand Mufti ofJerusalem, Amin al-Husseini. The Brotherhood organized mass demonstrationsin Egyptian cities under the slogans "Down With the Jews!" and "Jews Get Outof Egypt and Palestine!" Their Jew-hatred drew on the one hand on Islamicsources. First, Islamists considered, and still consider, Palestine anIslamic territory, Dar al-Islam, where Jews must not run a single village,let alone a state. Second, Islamists justify their aspiration to eliminatethe Jews of Palestine by invoking the example of Muhammad, who in the 7thcentury not only expelled two Jewish tribes from Medina, but also beheadedthe entire male population of a third Jewish tribe, before proceeding tosell all the women and children into slavery. Third, they find support andencouragement for their actions and plans in the Koranic dictum that Jewsare to be considered the worst enemy of the believers.Their Jew-hatred was also inspired by Nazi influences: Leaflets called for aboycott of Jewish goods and Jewish shops, and the Brotherhood's newspaper,al-Nadhir, carried a regular column on "The Danger of the Jews of Egypt,"which published the names and addresses of Jewish businessmen and allegedlyJewish newspaper publishers all over the world, attributing every evil, fromcommunism to brothels, to the "Jewish danger." The Brotherhood's campaign used not only Nazi-like patterns of action andslogans but also German funding. As the historian Brynjar Lia recounts inhis monograph on the Brotherhood, "Documents seized in the flat of WilhelmStellbogen, the Director of the German News Agency affiliated to the GermanLegation in Cairo, show that prior to October 1939 the Muslim Brothersreceived subsidies from this organization. Stellbogen was instrumental intransferring these funds to the Brothers, which were considerably largerthan the subsidies offered to other anti-British activists. These transfersappear to have been coordinated by Hajj Amin al-Husseini and some of hisPalestinian contacts in Cairo.” To summarize our first trip into history: We saw that the rise of Nazism andIslamism took place in the same period. This was no accident, for bothmovements represented attempts to answer the world economic crisis of 1929and the crisis of liberal capitalism. However different their answers mayhave been, they shared a crucial central feature: in both cases the sense ofbelonging to a homogeneous community was created through mobilizing againstthe Jews. Initially, however, European anti-Semitism had proved to be an ineffectivetool in the Arab world. Why? Because the European fantasy of the Jewishworld conspiracy was foreign to the original Islamic view of the Jews. Onlyin the legend of Jesus Christ did the Jews appear as a deadly and powerfulforce who allegedly went so far as to kill God's only son. Islam was quite adifferent story. Here it was not the Jews who murdered the Prophet, but theProphet who in Medina murdered the Jews. As a result, the characteristicfeatures of Christian antisemitism did not develop in the Muslim world.There were no fears of Jewish conspiracy and domination, no charges ofdiabolic evil. Instead, the Jews were treated with contempt or condescendingtolerance. This cultural inheritance made the idea that the Jews of allpeople could represent a permanent danger for the Muslims and might controlthe media and politics in league with Freemasons seem absurd. This brings usto our second point: The transfer of European anti-Semitism to the Muslimworld between 1937 and 1945 under the impact of Nazi Propaganda.

Islamism and National SocialismAmin al-Husseini, the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem, who was closely connectedto the Muslim Brotherhood, was already seeking an alliance with Nazi Germanyas early as spring 1933. At first, however, Berlin was dismissive. On theone hand, Hitler had already stated his belief in the "racial inferiority"of the Arabs in Mein Kampf while, on the other, the Nazis were extremelyanxious not to jeopardise British appeasement. In June 1937, however, the Nazis changed course. The trigger was the PeelPlan’s two-state solution. Berlin wanted at all costs to prevent the birthof a Jewish state and thus welcomed the Mufti’s advances. Arab antisemitismwould now get a powerful new promoter. A central role in the propaganda offensive was played by a Nazi wirelessstation, now almost totally forgotten. Since the 1936 Berlin Olympics avillage called Zeesen, located to the south of Berlin, had been home to whatwas at the time the world’s most powerful short-wave radio transmitter.Between April 1939 and April 1945, Radio Zeesen reached out to theilliterate Muslim masses through daily Arabic programmes, which also wentout in Persian and Turkish. At that time listening to the radio in the Arabworld took place primarily in public squares or bazaars and coffee houses.No other station was more popular than this Nazi Zeesen service, whichskilfully mingled antisemitic propaganda with quotations from the Koran andArabic music. The Second World War allies were presented as lackeys of theJews and the picture of the "United Jewish Nations" drummed into theaudience. At the same time, the Jews were attacked as the worst enemies ofIslam: "The Jew since the time of Muhammad has never been a friend of theMuslim, the Jew is the enemy and it pleases Allah to kill him". Since 1941, Zeesen’s Arabic programming had been directed by the Mufti ofJerusalem who had emigrated to Berlin. The Mufti’s aim was to “unite all theArab lands in a common hatred of the British and Jews”, as he wrote in aletter to Adolf Hitler. Antisemitism, based on the notion of a Jewish worldconspiracy, however, was not rooted in Islamic tradition but, rather, inEuropean ideological models. The Mufti therefore seized on the only instrument that really moved the Arabmasses: Islam. He invented a new form of Jew-hatred by recasting it in anIslamic mould. He was the first to translate Christian antisemitism intoIslamic language, thus creating an “Islamic antisemitism”. His first majormanifesto bore the title “Islam-Judaism. Appeal of the Grand Mufti to theIslamic World in the Year 1937”. This 31-page pamphlet reached the entireArab world and there are indications that Nazi agents helped draw it up.Let me quote at least a short passage from it: “The struggle between the Jews and Islam began when Muhammad fled from Meccato Medina… The Jewish methods were, even in those days, the same as now. Asalways, their weapon was slander… They said that Muhammad was a swindler…they began to ask Muhammad senseless and insoluble questions… and theyendeavoured to destroy the Muslims… If the Jews could betray Muhammad inthis way, how will they betray Muslims today? The verses from the Koran andhadith prove to you that the Jews were the fiercest opponents of Islam andare still trying to destroy it.”What we have here is a new popularized form of Jew-hatred, based on theoriental folk tale tradition, which moves constantly back and forth betweenthe seventh and twentieth centuries. This kind of Jew-hatred is used todayby the British group Hizb ut-Tahir. In 2002 this organization reproduced aleaflet in its website saying: “The Jews are a people of slander …atreacherous people …they fabricate lies and twist words from their rightcontext…Kill them wherever you find them.” Classical Islamic literature had as a rule treated Muhammad’s clash with theJews of Medina as a minor episode in the Prophet’s life. The anti-Jewishpassages in the Koran and hadith had lain dormant or were considered oflittle significance during previous centuries. These elements were now invested with new life and vigour. Now the Muftibegan to ascribe a truly cosmic significance to the allegedly hostileattitude of the Jewish tribes of Medina to the Prophet. Now he picked outthe occasional outbursts of hatred found in the Koran and hadith and drummedthem relentlessly into the minds of Muslims at every available opportunity –including via the Arabic short-wave radio station in Berlin.Radio Zeesen was a success not only in Cairo; it made an impact in Tehran aswell. One of its regular listeners was a certain Ruhollah Khomeini. When inthe winter of 1938 the 36-year-old Khomeini returned to the Iranian city ofQom from Iraq he “had brought with him a radio receiver set made by theBritish company Pye ... The radio proved a good buy… Many mullahs wouldgather at his home, often on the terrace, in the evenings to listen to RadioBerlin and the BBC”, writes his biographer Amir Taheri. Even the Germanconsulate in Tehran was surprised by the success of this propaganda.“Throughout the country spiritual leaders are coming out and saying ‘thatthe twelfth Imam has been sent into the world by God in the form of AdolfHitler’” we learn from a report to Berlin in February 1941. So, “without any legation involvement, an increasingly effective form ofpropaganda has arisen, which sees the Führer and Germany as the answer toevery prayer… One way to promote this trend is sharply to emphasizeMuhammad’s struggle against the Jews in the olden days and that of theFührer today.“ While Khomeini was not a follower of Hitler, those years maywell have shaped his anti-Jewish attitudes which in turn would later shapethe attitudes of his most ardent follower Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. To summarize: The historical record gives the lie to the assumption thatIslamic anti-Semitism was triggered by Zionist or Israeli policies. In 1937– eleven years before the founding of Israel! - Germany began todisseminate an Islamic antisemitism that fuses together the traditionalIslamic view that the Jews are inferior with the European notion that theyare deviously powerful. At one and the same time we find the Jews beingderided as “pigs” and “apes”, while simultaneously being demonised as thepuppet masters of world politics. This specific form of antisemitism wasbroadcast to the Islamic world by Radio Zeesen. At the same time theEgyptian Muslim Brotherhood was being subsidized by Nazi Germany and itsanti-Jewish agitation promoted. Radio Zeesen ceased operation in April 1945.But why, sixty-two years later, do we find the combination of the swastikaand the words “Kill all Jews” and “Allah” in Hampstead and elsewhere? Thisbrings me on to my third and final point.

The Second Division of the WorldAfter May 8, 1945, National Socialism was banned virtually throughout theworld. In the Arab world, however, Nazi ideology continued to reverberate.In her report on the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt discussedthe reactions to the trial in the Arab media: “…newspapers in Damascus and Beirut, in Cairo and Jordan did not hide theirsympathy for Eichmann or their regret that he ‘had not finished the job’; abroadcast from Cairo on the day the trial opened even injected a slightlyanti-German note into its comments, complaining that there was not ‘a singleincident in which one German plane flew over one Jewish settlement anddropped one bomb on it throughout the last war.’” The heartfelt wish to see all Jews eliminated was also expressed in April2001 by the columnist Ahmad Ragab of Egypt's second largest daily, thestate-controlled Al-Akhbar: "[Give] thanks to Hitler. He took revenge on theIsraelis in advance, on behalf of the Palestinians. Our one complaintagainst him was that his revenge was not complete enough." Manifestly, following 8 May 1945, there occurred a twofold division of theworld. The division in the political and economic system is well known asthe Cold War. The second split – which was obscured by the Cold War –concerned the acceptance and continuing influence of National Socialistforms of thought. In November 1945, just half a year after the end of the Third Reich, theMuslim Brothers carried out the worst anti-Jewish pogroms in Egypt'shistory, when demonstrators penetrated the Jewish quarters of Cairo on theanniversary of the Balfour Declaration. They ransacked houses and shops,attacked non-Muslims, and torched the synagogues. Six people were killed,and some hundred more injured. A few weeks later the Islamists' newspapers"turned to a frontal attack against the Egyptian Jews, slandering them asZionists, Communists, capitalists and bloodsuckers, as pimps and merchantsof war, or in general, as subversive elements within all states andsocieties," as Gudrun Krämer wrote in her study The Jews in Egypt 1914-1952.In 1946, the Brotherhood made sure that Amin al-Husseini, the former grandmufti was granted asylum and a new lease on political life in Egypt. At thattime, al-Husseini was being sought on war crime charges by, among others,Britain and the United States. Between 1941 to 1945, he had directed MuslimSS divisions in the Balkans and had been personally responsible for the factthat thousands of Jewish children, who might otherwise have been saved, gotkilled in the gas chambers. All this was known in 1946. Nonetheless, Britainand the United States chose to forgo criminal prosecution of al-Husseini inorder to avoid spoiling their relations with the Arab world. France, whichwas holding al-Husseini, deliberately let him get away.The years of Nazi Arabic language propaganda had made the Mufti by far thebest-known political figure in the Arab and Islamic world. But the 1946 defacto amnesty by the Western powers enhanced the Mufti’s prestige even more.The Arabs saw in this impunity, wrote Simon Wiesenthal in 1946, "not only aweakness of the Europeans, but also absolution for past and futureoccurrences. A man who is enemy no. 1 of a powerful empire – and this empirecannot fend him off – seems to the Arabs to be a suitable leader.” Now, thepro-Nazi past began to become a source of pride, not of shame and Nazicriminals on the wanted list in Europe now flooded into the Arab world. Whenon 10 June 1946 the headlines of the world press announced the Mufti's“escape” from France "…the Arab quarters of Jerusalem and all the Arab townsand villages were garlanded and beflagged, and the great man's portrait wasto be seen everywhere", reported a contemporary observer. But the biggestcheerleaders for the Mufti were the Muslim Brothers, who at that time couldmobilise a million people in Egypt alone. It was they, indeed, who hadorganized the Mufti’s return and from the start defended his Nazi activitiesfrom any criticism.In the following decades, large print-runs of the most infamous libel of theJews, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, were published at the behest oftwo well-known former members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Gamal Abdel Nasserand Anwar Sadat. Both the Muslim Brothers' unconditional solidarity withal-Husseini and their anti-Jewish riots mere months after Auschwitz showthat the Brotherhood did not object, to say the least, to Hitler's attemptto exterminate the Jews of EuropeThe consequences of this attitude, this blindness to the internationalimpact of the Holocaust, continue to affect the course of the Arab-Jewishconflict today. We see an expression off this in the continuing refusal ofthe Muslim Council of Britain, a British offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood,to recognise the specific nature of the Holocaust and attend HolocaustMemorial Day events. How do Islamists explain international support forIsrael in 1947? Ignoring the actual fate of the Jews during World War II,they revert to conspiracy theories, viewing the creation of the Jewish stateas a Jewish-inspired attack by the United States and the Soviet Union on theArab world. Accordingly, the Brotherhood "considered the whole UnitedNations intervention to be an international plot carried out by theAmericans, the Russians and the British, under the influence of Zionism."The mad notion of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, suppressed in Germany sinceMay 8, 1945, survived and flourished in the political culture of the Arabworld. An especially striking example is the charter adopted in 1988 by the MuslimBrotherhood in Palestine, better known as Hamas. In this charter--which"sounds as if it were copied from the pages of Der Stürmer," as SariNusseibeh, former PLO representative in Jerusalem, has written -Hamasdefines itself as "the spearhead and the avant-garde" of the struggleagainst "world Zionism." In the Charter, the Jews are accused of being behind all the shocks ofmodernity: “They aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corruptingconsciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. (They are)behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitateits control and expansion.” In addition, they are held responsible for everymajor catastrophic event in modern history: The Jews "were behind the FrenchRevolution [and] the Communist Revolution. . . . They were behind World WarI . . . they were behind World War II, through which they made hugefinancial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for theestablishment of their state. . . . There is no war going on anywhere,without having their finger in it. . . . Their plan," states Article 32 ofthe charter, "is embodied in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and theirpresent conduct is the best proof of what we are saying." How can it be thatardent supporters of Hamas such as Azzam Tamini, who is a regular guest ofthe BBC and Channel 4, is never seriously challenged about the antisemiticcontent of the charter? As in the 1930s and 1940s, the sheer absurdity of such claims makes itdifficult for educated people to believe that anyone could take themseriously. Such claims, nonetheless, triggered Pogroms in Russia, were usedas the textbook for the Holocaust in Germany and motivated the perpetratorsof 9/11. Islamic antisemitism is the reason why Hamas prioritise weapons andwar rather than peace and welfare. Islamic antisemitism is the reason whyHezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah recently warned Saudi Arabia and otherArab countries “not to normalize relations with Israel”. IslamicAntisemitism is the only reason why Iran – a county that has neither aterritorial dispute with Israel nor a Palestinian refugee problem – callsfor the destruction of Israel again and again. Some observers claim that political concessions by Israel would be enough tostop anti-Jewish hatemongering within the Arab-Islamic world. They arewrong. For Islamists, the issue at stake is not the welfare of individualPalestinians but the abolition of enlightenment, reason, and individualfreedom – achievements whose spread is attributed primarily to the Jews.When even today Germans in Beirut, Damascus, and Amman are greeted withcompliments for Adolf Hitler, this can hardly be Israel’s doing. Whengraffiti in Hampstead Garden Suburb combine swastikas with the words “killall Jews” and “Allah” – what on earth has this to do with Zionism? Ourhistorical excursion has, however, revealed that this combination is in noway accidental. The linkage of “kill all Jews”, “Allah” and the swastikaindicates a specific ideology, one that is connected both historically andideologically with Nazism and needs to be opposed with equal determination.

Why- however – is it proving so difficult to mount such an effort –especially, but not only, here in Britain? Three suggestions as to why thismight be: firstly, this struggle – at least for the time being – has to bewaged in opposition to a political left which has totally lost its moralcompass and political bearings. It is, true that Osama bin Laden hasembedded his strategic goal of talibanizing America and the world in alanguage that seeks to connect with Western protest movements and, beyondthat, put Islam in the place of the former Communist system. Thus, in BinLaden’s latest message of September 11, 2007, the fight against globalwarming is emphasized in order to attract the support of environmentalists,the anti-capitalist drum is banged (“You should liberate yourselves from thedeception, shackles and attrition of the capitalist system”) and, lastly,Noam Chomsky, the guru of the leftist anti-globalization struggle, isapplauded.On the other hand, Osama bin Laden and every other Islamist entity such asHamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime do not hide their goal –thedestruction of democratic societies and their replacement by a sharia-baseddictatorship. The American way of life, constitutes, according to binLaden’s latest message “the greatest form of polytheism and is rebellionagainst obedience to Allah.” It has to be replaced instead by Allah’s rule:“Total obedience must be to the orders and prohibitions of Allah Alone inall aspects of life.” And this is indeed the heart of the Islamistprogramme: the accusation that granting people political and personalfreedom amounts to heresy.The naivety or malice with which the political left has nevertheless yieldedto the siren songs of Islamism is therefore frightening. Thus, in May 2006Noam Chomsky met the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and defended andpraised Hezbollah’s insistence on keeping its arms, in defiance of UnitedNations decisions; Tariq Ramadan, an eloquent Islamist, has been given startreatment at European anti-globalization events; the Muslim Brotherhood’s TVpreacher, Sheikh Qaradawi gets invitations from the left-wing Mayor ofLondon, Ken Livingstone; while the Socialist Workers Party have made thestrategic decision to ally with a British offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood– the Muslim Association of Britain – in building the Stop the WarCoalition. Last summer thousands of people were mobilised by this allianceto march through central London chanting “we are all Hezbollah now”. Of course, a left which brands Israel as abstractly “evil” is not going totake Islamic antisemitism seriously. Demonising Israel entails becoming deafto antisemitism. Or, as Sigmund Freud put it, “a participant in a delusionwill not of course recognise it as such”.

2. Many Europeans assume that to draw attention to Islamic antisemitism isto play into the hands of racists. In Britain, multiculturalism has been theofficial civic religion for so long that any criticism of any minority groupseems to have become the equivalent of profanity. Obviously, racism,discriminating against people on the grounds of their origin or skin colour,must be combated. You can’t be, however, multicultural and preach murderousloathing of Jews. In my opinion, we mustn’t defend Jew-hatred on spurious“anti-racist” grounds; we should rather distinguish between antisemites andnon-antisemites within the Muslim communities. We mustn’t advocate a crude“top” and “bottom” dichotomy, in which the antisemitism of people fromMuslim countries is excused as a kind of “anti-imperialism of fools”. Weshould rather insist that the struggle against discrimination is a universalone.

3. Islamic antisemitism is a taboo subject even in some parts of academia: astory of intellectual betrayal and the corrupting influence of politicalcommitment. Professor Pieter von der Horst from the University of Utrecht inthe Netherlands found this out when he proposed to give a lecture on thetopic of the anti-Jewish blood libel. The head of the university asked himto excise the section of his lecture dealing with Islamic antisemitism. Whenhe refused to do so, he was invited to appear before a panel of fourprofessors who insisted he remove these passages. A lecture on Islamicantisemitism, so the argument went, might lead to violent reactions fromwell-organized Muslim student groups. Similar things have happened to me. When in April 2003 I was invited by YaleUniversity as keynote speaker on the topic of “Islamic Terrorism andAntisemitism: The Mission against Modernity”, there was such an outpouringof protest that the organizers changed the programme. The original title ofone of the panels - “Islamic Jihad. A Case of Global Non-State Terrorism” –was changed to “Global, Non-State Terrorism”. In addition a speaker wasadded to the podium whose sole qualification was that of being President ofthe local “Palestine Right to Return Coalition”. At least I was able to givemy talk. Not so in March 2007 at this University. Here too the term “Islamicantisemitism“ stymied what should have been a lively debate already inMarch. Following e-mail protests by some Muslim students, my lecture title“Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic antisemitism in the Middle East” was changed to“The Nazi Legacy: Export of Antisemitism into the Middle East”. This provedto be a futile semantic gesture: On the day of my arrival in Leeds, theUniversity administration cancelled my talk “on security grounds”. No one,including the Muslim students, had threatened violence. As before inUtrecht, freedom of speech was suspended – in my opinion - by an act ofpre-emptive self-censorship. Both university administrations probablybelieved they were meeting the wishes of their numerous Muslim students insuspending a lecture about Islamic antisemitism. The erroneousness of this approach becomes clear when we realize thatMuslims are criticizing Islamic antisemitism as well. “Why do we hate theJews?” asked Saudi columnist Hussein Shubakshi in a London-based Arabicdaily in May 2005. “The extent of the tremendous hatred of the Jews isbaffling. If we know … the true reason why the Jews have become the reasonfor every catastrophe, then we will be able to understand the idea ofdividing [human beings] into groups…” In January 2006, Tunisian Philosopher Mezri Haddad complained that Arabpublic opinion “ has found in antisemitism the perfect catalyst for all itsnarcissistic wounds and social, economic, and political frustrations.” Thefundamentalists had, he continued, “reduced the Koran to a case ofnauseating antisemitism,” but it must be admitted, “that some Koranicverses, intentionally isolated from their historical context, havecontributed even more to the anchoring of antisemitic stereotypes inArab-Muslim mentalities”. This “petrifaction” of the Arab-Muslim mentalitycan be reversed, so Haddad, but this would require “intellectual audacity”on the part of Islamic scholars. “Since they cannot purge the Koran of itspotentially antisemitic dross, they must closely examine this corpus withhermeneutical reasoning.” So while some Muslims support the universal struggle against antisemitism,other Muslims want to prevent any mention, let along any public discussion,of Islamic antisemitism. It is the latter group that has profited – at leastin the beginning - from the actions of Utrecht and Leeds Universities. The British historian Elie Kedourie whom I admire a lot stated that “moralintegrity and scholarly rigor were always complementary” and I subscribe tothis point of view. Today an increasing number of anti-Islamist Muslims arecomplaining about the “well-meaning” behaviour of Western academics whichlacks moral integrity and scholarly rigour. “When Westerners makepolitically-correct excuses for Islamism”, states, for example, TawfikHamid, a former member of the Egyptian Islamist organization Gama’aal-Islamiyya, “it actually endangers the lives of reformers and in manycases has the effect of suppressing their voices”. And he warns that,“without confronting the ideological roots of Islamism, it will beimpossible to combat it” – a reality that not only governments need to getinto their heads.Islamism is not motivated by a concept of reason but by a cult of death. Itdoes not strive for emancipation but for oppression. It uses the flag ofanti-colonialism to promote antisemitism. It is true that today there is noother anti-capitalist or anti-Western movement that is able to mobilise andinfluence so many people. Bin Laden’s latest message builds on this reality.But it is for this very reason all the more essential for every responsibleperson to draw an inseperable line between a concept of change that isrooted in the traditions of the Enlightenment and emancipation, and aconcept of change that is aimed in a fascist way at destroying thedevelopment of societies and the freedom of the individual. You can be infavor of or against Islamism and Fascism but you cannot be anti-Fascist andpro-Islamist at the same time.